


Have a Little Faith

by toyhto



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:15:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26101006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: Hermione and Pansy meet again.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67





	Have a Little Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Don't mind me I'm just trying to write women having sex. [Also tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com).

Pansy Parkinson walks into the room and everything is different.  
  
Hermione hasn’t seen her in ten years when suddenly she reappears in Draco Malfoy’s dinner party. Or maybe she’s been there all along and Hermione hasn’t. But now Harry is dating Draco and everything’s shifting and ending and moving around and Hermione’s here to be Harry’s friend even though she thinks she would be more comfortable anywhere else, and Pansy Parkinson walks up to her, passes her a glass of wine and asks her how she’s doing.  
  
She’s not doing well but of course she doesn’t say that. She doesn’t tell Pansy about the divorce and how she’s been both relieved and regretting it, and both of those feelings take up so much space it should be impossible for them to exist at the same time. But they do. Did. Everything’s a little better now but still strange. She’s got work but she doesn’t know who she is. She didn’t have much time to lose herself when she was a teenager, now she’s twenty-eight years old and she sees herself in the mirror and tries to find something she’s certain of and can’t.  
  
She tells Pansy that she’s fine and asks her how she is. Pansy talks about work and then takes her to the balcony and touches her side under her arm, and her breathing catches in her throat.  
  
There’s no way Pansy could _know._ But she keeps her fingers light against Hermione’s side and doesn’t pull away even when the moment gets dragged out and Hermione breathes in and no one comes to the balcony to find them, no one’s missing them, there’s nothing to draw lines with. She drinks of her wine and then lets herself stand too close to Pansy, so close she imagines she can feel the warmth of Pansy’s skin.  
  
It’s almost funny that she’s never been with a woman. Almost thirty years old, she can’t say if she’s a lesbian or what, and she says she doesn’t care about labels but plays with words anyway, but only in her mind. She can’t be a lesbian because she was with Ron for a long time and they had sex and everything and it was okay. Or: she tried to date men after the divorce and it felt absolutely pointless, therefore, see, a lesbian! She plays with words until she can’t find herself in any of those, and in the end words _are_ meaningless, because she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’s had crushes on women, of course, she’s imagined having her hands on someone’s warm skin, running her fingers up and down a soft body of curves and, even though it’s not the point, a cunt. She’s tried to think what it’d be like to go down for a woman. Would it be different? Would she want to do that? Could she dig her fingers gently into someone’s thighs and press them open, could she lean down and kiss up her thighs? Could she lick someone’s clit and would she like it? And is kissing a woman different – because it can’t be, can it, it’s only kissing, only lips brushing against each other, two human mouths. There can’t be a difference. Not anything of essence. This is what she thinks about when Pansy Parkinson leans closer to her on the balcony in Draco’s party, takes her glass of wine and drinks of it. She’s trembling. Pansy’s not. Pansy’s hand on her is steady and Pansy’s lips are getting stained from the wine.  
  
“Let’s go somewhere,” Pansy says, or something like that. But Hermione can’t move. If she moves, she doesn’t know where she’s going to end up. She stands still like an idiot and wonders what she’s going to do if Pansy gives up on her, on whatever it is that could happen. Would she run after her? Probably not. Probably she’d go back to her apartment and sleep alone like every night, and in the morning, the world would be just the same.  
  
“What’re we doing,” she says.  
  
“I don’t know,” Pansy says and gives back her glass of wine. She takes it and sips of it. The light coming through the glass to the balcony is warm like light always is when coming from someone else’s home, and she feels like a shadow. “I thought you were interested,” Pansy adds, watching her. “Sorry.”  
  
“I am.”  
  
“Really.”  
  
“If you are.” She takes a deep breath. “If you’re talking about what I think you are –“  
  
“You could come back to my place,” Pansy says. “We could have sex.”  
  
Hermione laughs.  
  
“Too much?”  
  
“No. It’s just, I haven’t –“  
  
“Never?”  
  
“Not with a woman.”  
  
“So,” Pansy says and shifts weight on her feet, “have you wanted to?”  
  
“Yeah. _Yeah._ But –“  
  
“But what?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“Are you afraid what they’ll think?” Pansy asks, nodding at the window that keeps them from everyone else.  
  
But Hermione’s not afraid of that, no, it’s everything else. It’s that she likes to keep her things in boxes, and this one’s been closed for a long time. If she opens it, it’s opened. There’s no closing it again. What comes out, comes out. And it’s stupid, really, because why would she need to put it back? This is the twenty-first century. And when she thinks about it, when she thinks about the box, she’s not sure if there’s ever _been_ a box – because if you look at yourself in the mirror and play with words like _lesbian_ , try them out in your mouth, try telling your story with them, try fitting everything that happened to you into this new narrative, _has_ there been a box? And anyway she started fumbling with the lid a long time ago.  
  
She follows Pansy to her place. The night is cold and it’s easy to breathe once they’re walking, but she’s on heels and Pansy’s place isn’t so close, so eventually they Disapparate. What catches them is a warm living room in a flat where there’s too much furniture and too little space and everything’s soft. Pansy lets her wander for a while and then corners her into the bedroom, and she tries to stop thinking but she can’t. What if she doesn’t like it? What if she does it somehow wrong? How can you be twenty-eight years old and try sex for the first time, kind of? There should be an age limit. There _is_ , she’s suddenly certain of that and doesn’t know where to put her hands. It’s ridiculous to be so nervous but she can’t help it.  
  
Pansy asks her what she wants, and what she wants is not to be asked, because she can’t tell. So they try.  
  
And yes, there’re no words that fit this, but no need to either, and it’s all good. It’s clumsy and awkward and she mightn’t like giving head to a woman either, we’ll see, but still, somehow, it’s all good. She kisses Pansy’s stomach. She kisses her breasts. She kisses her neck and her throat and her mouth and her closed eyes. She kisses her thighs and the inside of her knee. She kisses her clit and the curve of her ass. Pansy’s fingers are in her hair. Pansy’s legs are entangled with her. She doesn’t know what she expected, this is not it, and it doesn’t matter, everything is warm, she feels herself tensing up when Pansy slides her fingers up and down over her clit, stops there, finds the rhythm that works for her but it falters, and she catches Pansy’s wrist and tries to show her, then kisses her on the mouth, and then comes in her hands in what’s not a wave, not an earthquake, but more like a tiny promise of things that might come later. Words she might use once she can talk about this.  
  
She wakes up in Pansy Parkinson’s bed. There’s the scent of fresh coffee coming from somewhere.  
  
“So I heard you and Ron broke up,” Pansy says, when Hermione finds her in the kitchen. She’s sitting there in nothing but a t-shirt and panties and she’s pretty as hell. It’s difficult to believe they had sex last night. But they did. They _did._ “I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s alright,” Hermione says. It’s not. But she’s going to fake it until faking becomes being. That’s probably the only way. She has a feeling that Pansy can tell.  
  
“I’m glad you came with me.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I kind of didn’t think you would.”  
  
“Have a little faith in me,” she says.


End file.
